Has Champaign’s Budget Outlook Bottomed Out?

The city of Champaign's chief financial officer is confident that there should be no more layoffs or serious budget cuts.

Richard Schnuer appears before the city council this week to unveil his five year budget outlook. He says revenue forecasts from sales and income taxes and fees may not recover very quickly from the recession - but the rate of decrease has already slowed.

"We're being conservative and expecting that to continue through this fiscal year, but then we are expecting them to stabilize," said Schnuer. "Some of the other revenues such as property tax we are not forecasting a decline but seeing very little growth."

Schnuer says the six million dollars in budget cuts and fee increase the city of Champaign enacted this year should be enough to tide the city through the sluggish revenue over the next five years.